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Powell warning to Obama on Afghanistan
New York Times - September 28, 2009
As US President Barack Obama weighs sending more troops to Afghanistan, one of the most consequential decisions of his presidency, a key figure from the Bush administration has questioned the usefulness of such a move.
Mr Obama has discovered that the military is not unanimous in its support of the plan and that some of the civilian advisers he respects most have deep reservations.
Colin Powell, former secretary of state and retired four-star army general, visited Mr Obama in the Oval Office this month and expressed skepticism that more troops would guarantee success, according to people briefed on the discussion.
General Stanley McChrystal's troop request, which was to be submitted to the Pentagon this past weekend, has reignited a long-standing debate within the military about the virtues of the counter-insurgency strategy popularised by General David Petraeus in Iraq and now embraced by General McChrystal.
The top US commander in Afghanistan is expected to ask for as many as 40,000 more soldiers for the eight-year-old war, a number that has generated concern among top officers such as General George Casey, the army chief of staff, who worry about the capacity to provide more soldiers at a time of stress on the force, officials said.
While Mr Obama is hearing from more hawkish voices, including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Richard Holbrooke, the special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Mr Powell reminded the President of his long-standing view that military missions should be clearly defined.
Mr Powell is one of the three people considered by White House aides to be most influential in this current debate, along with Democrat senators John Kerry and Jack Reed.
All three have expressed varying degrees of doubt about the prospect of sending more forces to Afghanistan.
Senator Kerry, chairman of the Senate's foreign relations committee, has warned of repeating the mistakes of Vietnam, where he served, and has floated the idea of a more limited counter-terrorist mission.
In Vietnam, he said, "the underlying assumptions were flawed and the number of troops weren't going to make a difference".
Mr Reed, an army veteran, has not ruled out supporting more troops but said "the burden of proof" was on commanders to justify it.
General Casey has a stated goal by 2012 to increase a soldier's time at home from the current one year for every year of duty in Iraq or Afghanistan to two years at home for every year served. He recently told reporters that "if there is an increase of forces in Afghanistan, then that could slow that down".
"The question the President has to answer is 'What will more troops do?'" Mr Powell told reporters in California this week.
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